1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods and devices for extending the charge of the energy storage device (e.g., battery) of mobile host devices that include a hard disk drive. More particularly, this invention relates to methods and devices for converting the mechanical energy of the movement of a disk drive containing mobile host device into electrical energy to charge the energy storage device of the host device.
2. Description of the Prior Art and Related Information
The growing popularity of portable electronic devices has coincided with significant advances in both the storage capacity of current hard disk drives as well as their miniaturization. Indeed, high capacity and inexpensive disk drives having a form factor of less than two inches are now widely available. The manufacturers of portable devices such as still and video cameras, portable digital assistants (PDAs), music players, telephones and mobile computing devices have taken note and have begun widely incorporating disk drives in the devices they manufacture. In portable electronic systems, the capacity of the rechargeable battery determines the length of time the user may operate his or her system in an uninterrupted fashion. The disk drives of such systems, however, consume a considerable amount of the power supplied by the energy storage device (typically, a rechargeable battery). Conventional approaches to lengthening the time during which such systems may operate from the battery tend to concentrate on minimizing the peak power required from the battery. However, such approaches focus on power consumption and do not address the issue of the total amount of power available to be supplied to the mobile host device. More particularly, these approaches do not operate to recharge the battery to actually increase the amount of power available to be supplied to the host device.